


even if it leads nowhere

by theswearingkind



Category: American Idol RPS
Genre: M/M, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in the morning, kris makes eggs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	even if it leads nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the picfor1000 challenge at LJ. title from "chasing pavements," by adele. my pic [here](http://www.flickr.com/photos/librariesrock/3191923119/).

In the morning, Kris makes eggs.

Kris makes amazing eggs. Adam thinks it’s the only thing that came out of his marriage that was lasting, even though Kris would say that isn’t true and that Adam is just being a little bit of a bitch today, which is fair. Adam is finding it shockingly easy to be a bitch today.

Anyway. Kris makes amazing eggs – three each, with milk instead of water and half a stick of butter in the skillet, then scrambled to perfection. He’s made them for Adam more times than Adam can count – after he’s stumbled in late from some club, a little drunk and more than a little high and needing something to help ease him down, and there’s Kris, yawning and wiping sleep from his eyes, collar of the old t-shirt he sleeps in stretched down almost to his collarbone, and Adam won’t even have to say a word, Kris will just roll his eyes and head for the kitchen, where he will produce amazing eggs, light and fluffy and way better than any other eggs Adam has ever had in his entire life. Kris says it’s all in the wrist, which never fails to draw a dirty comment from Adam. Kris usually just smirks, like he knows some secret no one bothered to let Adam in on.

Anyone who thinks Kris is the nice boy he pretends to be clearly hasn’t spent more than ten minutes in the same room as him. Adam has, so he knows.

Adam doesn’t think this should be so hard.

Across the counter, Kris is scraping the eggs out of the skillet with the spatula, the really nice one Adam bought for Kris off QVC one night when he got stoned out of his mind and forgot to hide his credit cards before toking up. It’s ergonomically designed, coated in Teflon, drenched in the blood of Christ, and generally just a great big fucking waste of $32, but Kris laughed his ass off and made Adam eggs three times the week it got there, so he mostly counts it as a win.

Kris salts Adam’s eggs without pausing and doesn’t bother asking about pepper. He knows.

Sometimes, Adam has moments where he sees exactly what it would be like for them, exactly how it would go. Kris would still wander in, sleepy-eyed, still yawn broadly, still make eggs, but Adam wouldn’t sit rigidly on the stool on the other side of the counter – he’d walk right up, wrap himself around Kris, inhale the scent in the crook of his neck, try to steal the spatula and pretend that he’s only letting Kris hold on to it. They’d make out lazily against the edge of the counter, trading sloppy late-night kisses and forgetting all about the eggs until the smoke alarm would remind them, and then Kris would break it off – Adam never would – and, laughing, mutter one of his so-rare cuss words as he went to turn it off before they’d finally declare defeat, dump the dirty skillet in the sink, go back to bed, and stay there all day.

It would be just like this, almost, except different in all the ways that count, all the ways that make everything better, deeper, easier.

Adam has been in love before. He was in love with Brad in a way that thrilled him and scared him, that filled him up and made him feel like he was going to be consumed from the inside out, the feeling burning through his tissue until there was nothing left. It terrified him, but he wouldn’t have changed it for anything. Even the way it ended, as hard as it was and as much as it hurt, felt right – like they just woke up one day and that was it; it was time, and they were done.

The way he feels about Kris is different; he’s long past the point where he thinks he might wake up and be at the end of anything. This thing with Kris – it isn’t a straight line; there’s no endpoint in sight. It’s a feedback loop, channeling over into itself, and it grows every time he sees Kris’s face, every time he hears Kris’s voice.

Kris pushes the plate of eggs toward Adam, the corner of his mouth lifting in a little half-smile, and Adam feels his heart expand stupidly in his chest.

Kris opens his mouth to say something, but a noise from behind Adam stops him. Kris’s gaze shifts over Adam’s shoulder, and anyone who didn’t know him would never see it change even a little; but the faintest stain of color rises in his cheeks, and his shoulders tense the slightest bit right where they meet the line of his throat, and Adam knows even before he turns around what Kris is seeing.

He’s small and slim, and Adam supposes he could look like Brad, but he doesn’t, really, except in the ways that Brad looked like Kris. And when Adam meets his gaze, there it is, the reason Adam picked him – the guy lifts a hand in good-bye, smiling at them both, and it’s the same little half-smile that was on Kris’s face less than a minute ago.

Adam tries. He really does.

The door shuts behind the guy as he leaves, and it’s abruptly, resoundingly silent in their kitchen, Kris staring resolutely down at the counter. Adam says nothing.

There are things they do for each other. A week after Kris signed the divorce papers, Adam had come downstairs one morning to find a pretty little blonde thing using his toaster, dressed in nothing but a button-down Adam had gotten Kris for his last birthday. She could’ve been Katy’s sister, and Adam had never mentioned it to Kris, who hadn’t woken up until after she was gone and who had looked torn apart for days.

They won’t talk about this, either. They never do.

“Eat your eggs,” Kris says finally, and Adam does.


End file.
